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Shoeshine boy’s killer will probably get the pen pal he desires: DiManno

Saul Betesh, who raped and murdered 12-year-old Emanuel Jaques in 1977, is seeking a “pen pal” on a match-making website for prisoners.

On his Canadian Inmates Connect profile, Saul Betesh admits his "crime was bad, but with treatment and a bit more time, I feel I can once again become a productive member of society." (Canadian Inmates Connect Inc. / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

That question was asked rhetorically — more flippantly and dismissively than philosophically — by the man who beat, raped, tortured, throttled and then drowned the 12-year-old boy in a kitchen sink above a Yonge St. body rub parlour called Charlie’s Angels.

From the witness stand at his first-degree murder trial, Saul Betesh continued laconically: “I wasn’t thinking about Emanuel Jaques, except possibly before and after.

“I suppose he was part of my fantasies.”

Emanuel: Forever known as the Shoeshine Boy, child of an impoverished immigrant family, lured away from his corner stand by a sexual predator who’d promised him $35 to help move some photography equipment.

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Twelve hours Emanuel was kept in that apartment of horrors, repeatedly defiled, held by the heels and lashed with a “swagger stick” by Betesh while his roommate and fellow pedophile, Robert “Stretcher” Kribs, also assaulted the youngster; while another bouncer friend guarded the door.

It’s been nearly 40 years since Emanuel’s murder, summer of ’77 — decades spent in prison by the convicted Betesh, steel rigger by day, male prostitute by night, and so frightening as a youth to the parents who adopted him at six days old that they locked their bedroom door against him in the evening.

The same Saul Betesh who, as first reported Sunday by Andy Blatchford of The Canadian Press, is now seeking a “pen pal” on a match-making website, Canadian Inmates Connect. Mr. Lonely Heart, pining for companionship, either gender will do.

Not once has Betesh — a volatile prisoner, accused in the past of sexually assaulting another inmate, shunted from one institution to another, these days a self-professed practicing Wiccan — expressed any remorse for a sadomasochistic crime that shook this city to its core. In 1979, Betesh told Toronto Life: “No, I’m not sorry. I don’t feel anything except sorry that it’s put me in here. They say that’s part of my illness. I’m not sorry.”

Eight psychiatrists had diagnosed him as fit to stand trial, though Betesh entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, a term that doesn’t exist anymore in Canadian courts.

Emanuel Jaques, 12, was lured away from his shoeshine stand before he was tortured and murdered in the summer of 1977. (Toronto Star file photo)

The city of that era doesn’t exist anymore either. It was a strange period of suddenly manifest sex ’n’ sleaze, Yonge St. downtown infested with massage parlours and fleshpots. The Age of Aquarius and Summers of Love from the late ’60s had given way to a wave of squalid commercialized decadence; Toronto the Good (and anal) transformed into Toronto the Wicked. Emanuel’s terrible murder — his body discovered wrapped in garbage bags on the roof’s building — outraged the citizenry. People took to the street in protest; politicians and police responded to the demands for a civic clean-up. Bylaws were passed that swept the parlours and adult stores off Yonge and the twisted heart of the dross — Yonge and Dundas — was re-envisioned, leading directly to the development of the Yonge-Dundas Square plaza we have now.

In the years since, whenever a particularly ghastly murder occurs — Barbra Schlifer, slain the day after she was called to the bar; Jane Creba, an innocent victim of a wild Boxing Day shootout; children abducted by sexual deviants: Alison Parrott, Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan, Andrea Atkinson, Kayla Klaudusz, Holly Jones, Cecilia Zhang — somebody inevitably declares that Toronto has lost its innocence. But that moment really happened in the early morning hours of July 29, 1977, when Saul Betesh and his chicken-hawk collaborators preyed upon a little boy.

Now he wants a pen friend.

This isn’t the first time Betesh has gone trolling for a sympathetic sap via cyberspace. “I am 60 years young,” he wrote on a similar American website in 2011. “I have short hair, blue eyes and stand 6 feet tall. I’m slightly overweight but active.” (Actually, he tipped the scaled at 300 pounds back then.) “I have three passions in life. 1. Gardening. 2. Computers (programming not the Internet. 3. Cooking. I am a practicing Druid and I also attend Wiccan Services. That is the most important part of my life as it concerns my interaction with the gods and the planet Earth. I will write anybody back who includes a photo.”

Mentioned only that he was behind bars for “assault” — not a peep about the depravity of his sex murder. But of course hook-up sites are notorious for crucial information withheld and blarney spun.

This time ’round, Betesh — who’s never applied for parole — is more forthright. After revealing his fondness for playing Dungeons and Dragons, making stained glass and sewing quilts for charity (!), he adds: “In closing, I won’t lie to you. My crime was bad, but with treatment and a bit more time, I feel I can once again become a productive member of society. I will answer all letters, male or female, that are respectful, the others I will trash. I will not write anybody under the age of 20. I hope to hear from you soon.”

The thing is, he probably will.

Schoolgirl sex killer Paul Bernardo has been the object of fascination and marriage-proposals by fan-groupies. Ted Bundy, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Stranglers, the Menendez brothers: All married in prison after committing notorious murders. There are women (and some men) specifically drawn to killers, either because they believe they can see the “true” good side to them or because they’re lured by sharing the spotlight of infamy. There’s even a word for the pathology: Hybristophilia.

So Saul Betesh will probably snag a sap, a correspondence accomplice.

Don’t waste the stamp on this waste of skin.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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